Should the Olympic Games be Extended?

[Sir Rols]

This was posted by @Durban Sandshark in the LA basketball thread, but I thought it probably deserved a thread of it’s own:

1 hour ago, Durban Sandshark said:

Now that I've given this some further thought following this development, I'm now starting to be even further convinced that the Summer Olympics schedule should be expanded to a month like with soccer's and rugby's World Cups (rugby's version now goes within two months) in following David Wallenshinsky's proposal. Soccer used to have the pre-Opening Ceremony competition all to itself until Tokyo 2020 with softball joining in. Paris 2024 had rugby sevens (largely due to, I think, sharing Stade De France with track and field), archery, and women's team handball all playing at that stage.  Los Angeles 2028, it's going to be basketball, cricket, water polo, team handball, rugby sevens, and field hockey along with soccer. Why is water polo going first this time out of the aquatics in Los Angeles? Just wondering. With cricket, surely the all-lucrative and powerful South Asian subcontinent will unquestionably get engaged with the Summer Olympics like never before in higher broadcasting fees, greater rights, viewership, and coverage there. Basketball will be definitely OK here in this Los Angeles edition with this scheduling change given its massive global popularity and FIBA's global sports power and consent. Guess it's too late to change it to a month now for Los Angeles but maybe not Brisbane. Maybe.

With all these sports we've been getting and watching in recent Summer Olympics programs, especially ones that tend to come and go like karate and breakdancing (never mind that Los Angeles is a highly important global hip hop city), and respond to gigantism, why not expand the schedule to a month? It makes things less tough to seriously follow them outside the Olympics more consistently for mainstream fans. Not to mention leaving the impression of multiple sports going over each other now in Los Angeles' 2028 schedule. Why not also expand the athlete ranks to around 14-15,000? We can move the comp official days pre-Opening Ceremony and make them official too and have two off days following that with the OC and a day off from competition. Another off day be applied elsewhere. Broadcasters/streamers in multiple platforms like NBC in particular surely would like to have and welcome their schedules stretched out more while still going wall-to-wall in hours, and viewers won't have to choose what to see at the expense of another worthy sport live while still heading on-demand and with both parties getting breathers. 

In many respects, when you count the Paralympics, the Olympic period for a host city already stretches close to two months. That’s a big burden for any city to be in a “special” mode, with consequential disruption to normal patterns of business, commuting, services and more. In most cases, the disruption is alleviated through being scheduled in holiday times. Extending much further, though, would risk impacting non-holiday periods. I don’t know if there’s any studies that have been done on the effect of the Games on business productivity in the home city during gamestime, but I seem to remember anecdotally that retail sales in London slumped during its games.

The Olympics create a far, far bigger impact on a city than the examples made of the FIFA and Rugby WCs, which are mainly limited to sports sessions in single venues across a wider country on match days. I’m not sure if any single city could be placed under the strain of an extended and continual entertainment lockdown for similar long periods as the WC tournaments.

That said, as noted, Olympic competition is starting earlier and earlier, for more and more sports, before the official opening anyway. And more and more sports, and disciplines within existing sports, keep getting added. Maybe there is a case for expanding the games to a formal three week period. They do seem to flash by in two weeks, so perhaps a single extra week of good times isn’t too much to ask for?

Edited August 21, 2025 by Sir Rols

[krow]

i can't vote in this because i clicked no, but it requires a 2nd choice as well. 

since they should not be extended, i don't want to skew the results.

[Sir Rols]

14 minutes ago, krow said:

i can't vote in this because i clicked no, but it requires a 2nd choice as well. 

since they should not be extended, i don't want to skew the results.

I took the second question out.

[yoshi]

An interesting idea. But I think the IOC would sooner formally award the games to nations if they wanted to ease the burden on single cities - & if we ever get to the stage of seriously making them a month long, they'd probably sooner split it up into two Olympics of two weeks each so they can take some summer TV cash every two years rather than four...

[Bear]

No, reduce the sports programme instead.

The good thing about Brisbane compared to LA is its reduced infrastructure and capabilities, which will discourage further expansion through the 2032 cycle. There will need to be a conversation though about reducing the Games impact that includes an examination of the current sports programme as well as venue requirements.

Security and other costs related to the Games also need to be considered before deciding to expand the Games, cause if you add more days, that means more days you have to pay for keeping venues and sites safe, more days of having shuttles and buses running between venues and villages, more days of operating venues, etc. Of course this might be offset by increased ticket sales, but it still seems like a lot to go through.

[baron-pierreIV]

There are a few IDIOTIC, really duplicative "sports"--that, if anything, should be removed.  By 2028, it'll become just TOO gargantuan.  And as if the spread of LA/southern California, wasn't big enough, they have to enlist Oklahoma City and 4 more East Coast sites?  And now, with Frump's policies, it could be an even bigger flop.  Or is it just too big to fail now?? 🤨 

And '28 has become so big, that they were forced to push the next Winter Games (in the US) to 2034 as '28 would've overshadowed it in everything -- and made some sort of hokum, make-shift WOGs for 2030.  Luckily, they found another placeholder sucka in France for 2030.  

Edited August 21, 2025 by baron-pierreIV

[Cyriln]

Has an official reason been given on why so many sports have been planned before the OC? For basketball, they say it is to have the quarterfinals spread over two days but it's something that could have been done in 2024 if there were not a day off to transfer everyone from Lille to Paris.

Also, do you have examples of competitions with events every day, all day long, during three weeks or more? Until now, football world cups had their first rest days after 15 days (it will be 27 days next year with the expansion to 48 teams - and it's gonna be boring). Rugby world cup matches are mainly on weekends, so there are a lot of days off. Cycling Grand Tours lasts 23 days, but have 2 rest days. I'm afraid longer Olympics would be exhausting for everybody: media, spectators, viewers...

And what about Winter Games, that doesn't need three weeks at all, but would even more look like discount Games compared to the longer Summer ones?

[baron-pierreIV]

2 hours ago, Cyriln said:

Has an official reason been given on why so many sports have been planned before the OC?

It's everything. 

- Spacing out the schedule (so there's a good mix of sports for broadcast each day)

- not having gold medal events at venues that are beside each other on the final 2 days of the Games.
- lodging logistics in the Village (making room for 2nd week athletes after the 1st week guys are done); 
- quite a few venues are doubling up for at least 2 sports; so there have to be off-days to take down the old set-up and put in the new one.  
It's a show with 35/36 moving pieces that have to coalesce over 20 days.  

[Bear]

Doing a research project on Tahoe 1960 and look what I stumbled across:

This was from 1955! Imagine what Otto Mayer would think if he saw what the Games are like today...

[Brekkie Boy]

Not to a month or even three weeks but amazed they've never bought the Opening Ceremony forward to Thursday night given that is traditionally a peak viewing night in the US.   Similarly pushing back the Closing Ceremony to Monday would give them an entire slate of events on the Sunday.  In theory that two day extension could mean no need for any events pre-Opening Ceremony.  

[mr.bernham]

I voted yes. I think a third week would make the most sense, but only if the whole regional/multiple cities approach is increasingly used. 

This may be a hot take, but I'd be in favor of reducing the schedule and merging the Olympics and Paralympics into a single month-long event. 

I do think serious discussions need to be had about the size of the event itself. Boosters keep saying that adding all these events will bring in new spectators, but I want to see some hard data post-Brisbane for the events added since Paris. 

[Cyriln]

1 hour ago, mr.bernham said:

I'd be in favor of [...] merging the Olympics and Paralympics into a single month-long event. 

Before 2024, I thought a merger should have been a long-term objective (long term because we first have to reach gender equality in media representation, let's not dilute Paralympics in an environment where everyone is not yet represented as it should).

But when attending both Olympics and Paralympics, I felt a different mood for each event, even if they were in the same venues. Olympics have the weight of History and, by comparison, Paralympics seems directed towards the future. There are more local spectators, more families, more kids (the last week of Paralympics was also the first week of school year in France and there were some school trips at Paralympic events).

But the most striking examples are the speeches: do you imagine any IOC president giving a speech as passionate as Andrew Parsons did? Olympics and Paralympics have strong ties that must become even stronger in the future, but Paralympics have their own spirit, their own ideals, their own message and they must stay independent as long as issues relating to disabilities are not taken seriously (to illustrate how we're far of it, in a "one year after" interview, when Michaël Jeremiasz, the French chef-de-mission for Paralympics, has been asked about Macron's policies for disabled after Paralympics, he used the word "traitor").

[Brekkie Boy]

Agree - and of course the Paralympics being cheaper to attend open it up more, especially to locals.   Practically merging the two would add to the requirement for hotel rooms, training facilities etc. and if events were cut to enable a merger you can guarantee it would be the Paralympics that suffer most.    The current split arrangement is the most cost effective way of staging both and really gives the host city an added bonus to stage in the post-Olympics glow and effectively makes the games an 8 week event.

[Hansfromdenmark]

I have earlier thought that it should expand with more sports, and then divide it to 2 cities and 2 weeks may and 2 weeks august.. Then smaller cities kan manage it, it we have 2 cities with 6-7000 rather than one with 11.000. And then more room for more new sports. The placement of the sport in either may or august, should be different from time to time, recarding wich cities goes togehter and what venues they have etc etc. Så 2 cities form a united bid where they split the sports between them. It can be cities far apart, the same athletes are not bot times. (only journalists will have busy times). Så it could be Amsterdam and Seoul. It cout be Vancouver and Lissabon. Or it could be 2 cities close together as Copenhagen and Stockholm. And then regarding what are local big and small and what venues and possibilities you have you make a joint bid. It will cost less for the citues, it is a smaller event alone, but together the Olympic grows and gets much more events on board. 

Am i totally dumb with this idea?